Voice Within the Void: Poems of Homo supinus

by Louis Daniel Brodsky

Homo supinus's Morning Sickness

A strange awakening — strange as change itself — To rise to the scream of your faceless alarm clock And realize you have no feet, no hands, That you re hovering three inches above the rug, Flailing at door handles, with stubs, That all the abstract paintings Lining the walls last evening Are nowhere in sight, Have turned your apartment into a white shimmer, As if your eyes, overnight, contracted cataracts, Forcing you to view the universe like a shark, Fifty fathoms deep in an ocean of morning sickness. What strange alchemy attends you; What sea-change dreams have inundated your spirit!

A burning numbness surges up and down your body, From kneecaps to hips, Brainstem to tailbone, outside your vertebrae, From a ganglion of pinched nerves, perhaps, Or liquid electricity flowing through your bones, In channels that once contained marrow. You pray your transformation is merely metaphysical, Surrealistic, short-lived, Perpetrated by your mischievous psyche Or some malevolent devil on a tear. Yet, nowhere are there signs of trickery, treachery. You fear you may have to stay here forever, Waiting for this madness to disappear, Or leave your apartment in this disembodied condition.

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Summary:

This volume of seventeen poems introduces us to a new species, a devolved offshoot of man, bearing apocalyptic scars from Auschwitz and Hiroshima. Mired in hallucinations, Homo supinus, a deformed, androgynous creature who rarely leaves his bed, is unequipped to deal with any reality other than that of his immediate physical requirements. He is the ignoble savage in all of us, a demon-ridden creature who forces us to reevaluate ourselves in light of his degradation.